Outliving Ones Offspring / Live-Action Films

• 300: The Captain's son Astinos gets decapitated by a Persian horseman, causing the Captain to go ballistic.
• 13 Minutes: Elsa's son dies shortly after his birth. If he was Elser's son, then it applies to him too.
• Across the Universe (2007): Daniel's mother suffers this after he dies in Vietnam. Lucy, his girlfriend, sees as two military men deliver a death notification, after which his mom slumps down in agony.
• There's a special case in Aliens: Ellen Ripley was in stasis for 57 years, so her daughter had grown physically older than her and died of old age.
• After Earth: Cypher lost his daughter to an Ursa prior to the movie’s main events and he spends the majority of the movie worrying about his son being out in the wild while Cypher is immobile at their ship’s crash site. Even worse is that he can see what his son sees, but he’s unable to do anything to protect his son other than tell him what to do.
• The archivist in The Age of Stupid mentions that his grandchildren would have been angry at him for breaking the covenant of improving the Earth through generations...if they had survived into adulthood.
• À l'aventure: Mina got into masochism while seeking means of coping after her daughter died while still in infancy.
• Alpha (2018): A group of hunters from another tribe who temporarily travel with Keda, his father, and their companions is led by a man whose own son died over the past year.
• An Unfinished Life: Einar was emotionally destroyed by the death of his young adult son in a car accident ten years ago. Nina the diner owner also lost her daughter when the girl drowned as a preadolescent.
• Avatar: The Way of Water: Jake and Neytiri outlive their oldest son, Neteyam, when he’s shot protecting his siblings.
• Bad Apples: Robert reveals to a colleague at the hospital that, before they moved to the neighbourhood, he and his wife Ella had a baby. However, due to health problems that were left untreated until it was too late, the baby died, which utterly devastated Ella. They moved to try coping with the loss.
• Barry Lyndon: Redmond Barry loses his only trueborn son by Lady Lyndon to a horseback riding accident when the boy wanders off to try to tame a horse by himself. This sends both Barry and his wife into a deep depression, while it also weakens his hold over Lady Lyndon's inheritance (Barry having married the beauteous widow for the money that she inherited from her late husband), opening himself up for challenge by his older stepson.
• Blue Bayou: Parker is dying of cancer while her elderly father still lives. It's implied that he's accepted it and prioritizes making her happy.
• Boys on the Side: Robin's mother has to live with the loss of her young son Tommy and her fully grown daughter succumbing to a lung infection as a result of having AIDS before her time comes.
• This is Casper's backstory - he died at the age of twelve, having taken ill while playing in the winter weather, and his death drove his father to try to invent a machine that'll bring the dead back to life.
• Cheaper by the Dozen (2003): Kate's parents outlived her sister, who died in childhood.
• City Hall: A particularly tragic example happens early on in the movie, when a six-year-old boy is killed during a shootout between a cop and a drug dealer, which naturally leaves the father devastated. This also ends up kickstarting the entire plot when we find out why the drug dealer was on the street in the first place.
• Clara: Isaac had a son with his ex-wife, who died young. Their marriage collapsed over it, and by the time the film starts he still hasn't gotten over losing him.
• Coming Home in the Dark: After Mandrake gets the family to dissuade the other van from coming to their rescue, there's a pause of time... and then Mandrake shoots both Jordan and Maika.
• The Conjuring Universe:
  • Annabelle: Evelyn's daughter was killed in a car accident years ago. She considers it as Offing the Offspring because she was the one who drove the car.
  • Annabelle: Creation: The opening shows Annabelle Mullins being hit by a car in front of their parents, who proceed to do a ritual to bring her soul into a doll so she may live again. Needless to say, something goes wrong.
• Crimson Peak: It turns out that the ghostly baby is Thomas and Lucille Sharpe's infant child. The baby was born sickly for possibly any number of reasons (being the child of Brother–Sister Incest for instance); one of Thomas's wives Enola did what she could to nurse the baby back to health, but to no avail.
• The Day After: Dr. Oakes' daughter Marilyn is vaporized in the initial attack on Kansas City. He never sees his wife Helen or his son Alan again after the bombs hit, and he's indicated to be dying of radiation poisoning by the end himself.
• Dead Poets Society: Neil Perry commits suicide after his father forbids him to perform in the theatre and forcibly withdraws him from Welton.
• Don't Listen: Daniel and Sara wake up one morning and find their son Eric drowned in the pool. The following shots are snippets of his funeral. It's later revealed that Daniel, while possessed by the witch's ghost, drowned Eric himself. When he finds out at the end, the revelation leads him to blow his brains out.
• In Deewaar, Sumitra outlives her son Vijay, whose child, in turn, had died without even being born.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Martha Kent attends the funeral of her adoptive son, Clark, who dies sacrificing himself to kill Doomsday. He gets better.
  • In the Bad Future of Zack Snyder's Justice League, Darkseid kills Diana/Wonder Woman, and her mother Hippolyta attends her ancient world-like funeral.
  • Black Adam: It’s revealed that, in Black Adam’s backstory, his son was murdered after giving his father his powers.
• Djinn: Salama and Khalid's marriage has been fraught with tension since the post-natal death of their infant son.
• In Dragonslayer, this happens to the dragon. Returning home to find that someone has killed your children? Hoo mama...
• Endless: Chris's mom is distraught over his death, taking it out somewhat against Riley and her parents. His dad later visits his grave as well, leaving flowers by the tombstone.
• Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile: Discussed when Ted's mother comes to visit him during his Florida trial in order to convince him to plead guilty in exchange for avoiding the death penalty.
  Eleanor Louise Cowell: A mother shouldn't have to outlive her son.
• In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Henry Shaw Jr. is killed by Credence Barebone's Obscurus, and after he is dead his father Henry Shaw Sr. walks over to his dead body, looking devastated.
  • Potentially with Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore: Credence's Obscurus parasite has begun to destroy him internally and will inevitably kill him, but he survives the film. He's revealed to be the illegitimate son of Albus' brother Aberforth, who will reach an old age and survive the Second Wizarding War around 60 years later and there's no indication of Credence or Aberforth having had a son or Albus a nephew once Harry Potter meets Aberforth and learns some of the Dumbledore family history.
• In Fearless (1993), Carla's baby died in a plane crash. Because she thinks it's her fault he died, this adds to her already tremendous feelings of Survivor's Guilt.
• Feast of Love: Harry and Esther are mourning the death of their son Aaron, who died prior to the film's events, while Harry's taken leave from his job as a professor over it. Later it's revealed Harry partly blames herself over his death by not giving Aaron more guidance.
• Friday the 13th:
  • In the original Friday the 13th, Pamela Voorhees outlived her son, Jason, who drowned in Crystal Lake because his counselors were busy screwing. This is the reason why she targets every counselor of the camp since.
  • Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning: Not only is Roy's son killed, but Roy is one of the paramedics responding to the scene, forcing the man to see his own son's bloodied corpse. This prompts him to impersonate Jason and go on a killing spree.
• In The Godfather,
  • Sonny is shot dead while his father Vito is recovering from his own gunshot wounds. Finding out Sonny's dead is what spurs Vito to make peace with the rest of the mafia families.
  • Don Philip Tattaglia, one of Vito's rivals, loses his son Bruno when he's killed by gunmen working for Sal Tessio.
  • Michael outlives his unborn child with Apollonia when she's blown up by a car bomb meant for Michael.
  • Averted in The Godfather Part II, when Michael orders that nothing is to happen to Fredo while their mother is still alive. Played straight in the backstory where Vito's mother outlives his brother Paolo before giving herself up to save Vito.
  • In The Godfather Part III, an assassin misses Michael and kills his daughter Mary instead.
• In Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), the film starts with the death of Andrew as collateral damage from one of Godzilla's battles and the rest of the film details the toll it had on his parents.
  • Mark divorces from his family, becoming bitter against Godzilla.
  • Emma lost grip of her sanity and genuinely believed that releasing all the Titans against the Earth was some way to bring Andrew back to her.
• Gosford Park: Mrs. Croft mentions to the police that her son with Sir William died of scarlet fever when he was a year old.
• Discussed in Gravity. The protagonist mentions that she had a daughter who died in a preschool accident.
  Dr. Ryan Stone: I had a daughter. She was four. She was at school, playing tag. Slipped, hit her head, and that was it. Stupidest thing.
• The Green Mile: Paul Edgecomb, at age 108, has outlived his (unseen) son, and everyone else he has ever loved, due to John Coffey accidentally prolonging his life. Paul wonders if it is a punishment from God for letting John Coffey die.
• Grumpy Old Men: John Gustafson shows Ariel Truax a photo of his son Brian, who died in the Vietnam war.
• In The Guilty, Michael goes to his ex-wife Iben's place and finds that she has killed their infant son Oliver during a psychotic episode.
• Halloween: If we meet both the Sheriff of Haddonfield and his child, odds are the child will be killed during the film before their parent.
  • In the original film, Sheriff Brackett's daughter Annie is killed in the backseat of her car. We see his reaction in the next film when her body is found.
  • Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers: Sheriff Meeker's daughter Kelly is killed by Michael when he stabs her with a shotgun. Sheriff Meeker would die in the next film, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers.
  • Halloween II (2009): Despite surviving the events of the 2007 remake, Annie Brackett is killed by Michael.
  • In Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, one of the members of the lynch mob rustled up by Loomis mentions that his son was killed by Michael somewhere during Michael's original killing spree in the first two films.
  • In Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, Richard and Darlene Carruthers are away while their daughter Rachel is murdered by Michael.
  • In early treatments for Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later, where the film didn't exist in its own continuity branching from the second film, Laurie Strode outlived her daughter Jamie, who was killed by Michael in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.
  • In Halloween Kills, Laurie's daughter Karen is killed by Michael Myers near the end of the film.
• In The Hateful Eight, General Smithers is in Wyoming having arranged for a tombstone on the grave of his son, Chester.
• In A Haunting in Venice, the plot is set in motion when Alicia died under mysterious circumstances a year earlier and her mother Rowena arranges a séance so she could hear her daughter's voice one more time.
• Highlander: Connor Macleod suffers from this, being practically immortal — they're adopted children in his case, but his children nevertheless.
• Played with in the case of Binx and Emily's parents in Hocus Pocus. Emily is murdered by the three witches but Binx is still alive and cursed into an immortal cat and his parents presumably never found out what happened to their son, believing him to be dead also.
• Home Sweet Home (2005) have the mysterious "monster" who's the subject of a local urban legend, but is later revealed to be real when she abducted May and Alex's young son early in the film. A further research from a concerned May and it's revealed said monster is actually a normal, human woman named Yim-Hung, who lose her husband and son in the destruction of the slums, years before the movie's events, causing her to become insane with grief; her abduction of May's child is to replace her missing offspring.
• In The House With a Clock in Its Walls, Mrs. Zimmerman lost her husband and daughter during World War II (possibly in a concentration camp, although this is not outright stated). Her grief is such that she has been unable to use her considerable magic powers ever since, and in one scene she remarks that she would give just about anything to have her daughter back.
• I Am Legend: Robert Neville lost his wife and daughter years ago, not to the vampiric virus, but to a helicopter crash during the confusion of New York's evacuation.
• Infinite Storm: Pam lost her daughters at a young age due to carbon monoxide poisoning that happened in the building they were living in.
• Interstellar
  • Cooper, the hero of the film, time travels into the future by passing through a black hole. Being 125 years old (while looking 40-ish), he meets his now-elderly daughter on her deathbed. After a short talk, she sends him away so he won't have to see her die. The novelization also reveals that his son had already died of old age by that point several years prior.
  • Cooper's son Tom also loses his son Donald while Cooper is away.
• In the Bedroom: Frank ends up getting killed by Richard while trying to stop him from seeing Natalie and her sons about thirty minutes in; the rest of the film focuses on his parents trying to process their grief and Matt's eventual avenging of his death.
• In the Fade: Katja suffers this as her six-year-old son Rocco is murdered in a bombing with her husband. It's clearly his death that especially pushes her over the edge.
• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: It's revealed that Indy and Marion outlived their son Mutt, who died in Vietnam.
• The Iron Claw: As in real life, Jack Adkisson Sr., better known as Fritz Von Erich, outlives all but one of his sons, namely Kevin. He and his wife Doris had six sons in real life, but the oldest, Jack Jr. (who died in a childhood accident), is only mentioned in passing, and the youngest, Chris, was left out of the movie.
• Itsy Bitsy: Kara had a toddler son named Stevie. One night, while out on the road, Kara and Stevie got involved in a traffic accident. Kara survived, but Stevie didn't.
• It's a Wonderful Knife (2023): In the alternate timeline, Winnie's parents have both been devastated by her brother's murder. David's only purpose in life is serving Waters, while Judy was become a Lady Drunk. She learns the killer intentionally did this not only with them but many other people, killing their kids and then buying up whatever property they had afterward when this drives them to leave town over how depressed they've become.
• It's a Wonderful Life: In the reality where he was never born, George learns that his brother Harry drowned in icy water as a child because George wasn't there to save him. It's established that Ma Bailey is still alive in this reality, and is a widow left embittered by the deaths of her husband and only child; additionally, since George's father Peter died when George was a young man, it's quite possible that he was also still alive at the time of Harry's death.
• Jennifer's Body:
  • Imagine being in the shoes of Jennifer's mother. You come into your daughter's bedroom, not suspecting a thing is wrong, only to find that she's been (or so it seems) murdered by her best friend.
  • Jonas and Colin's parents have to deal with the fact that their sons were brutally murdered and eaten.
  • Imagine also being Ahmet's parents. Your son goes on an exchange trip to a foreign country, only to presumably die in an out-of-control fire... except he's actually been eaten alive.
• Invoked by Denzel Washington's titular character in John Q. as to why he is taking a bunch of hostages at a hospital in order to get the heart surgery his son needs to survive.
  John: I am not going to bury my son! My son is going to bury me!
• The Karate Kid:
  • The Karate Kid (1984): While Mr. Miyagi was serving in World War II, his wife and son died due to complications from childbirth.
  • The Karate Kid (2010): Mr. Han lost his wife and daughter in a car accident years ago. He and his wife were having an argument, which led him not to pay attention to the road. Since then, he has been repairing and destroying his car over and over, futilely trying to make his feelings of guilt go away.
• Kingsman:
  • Kingsman: The Secret Service: Harry mentions that the starting money for the Kingsmen agency was given by a bunch of aristocrats who lost their sons in World War I and subsequently pooled their resources.
  • The King's Man: The Duke of Oxford ends up outliving both his wife and son after both were shot in separate instances.
• Kill Bill: The Bride thinks that she outlived her unborn daughter after she was rendered comatose upon being shot at, hence why she engages in a revenge plot against her former boss and teammates. In reality, her daughter is still alive.
• Killer/saurus: Professor Peterson's motivation for researching the medical potential of bioprinting is because of his daughter. She was sick from something terminal and was put on a waiting list for treatments that could save her life. She died before she could get said treatments.
• Knives Out:
  • Before the movie starts, the 85-year-old Harlan Thrombey has buried one son named Neil. He still cares for his daughter-in-law and granddaughter by their union.
  • After Harlan's death, his still-living mother mourns his death quietly. Her exact age isn't stated (though by sheer biology probably no less than 100). None of her grandchildren nor great-grandchildren know.
• In Kung Fu Hustle, the Landlady and Landlord had given up martial arts because their son was killed in a fight some years earlier.
• Last of the Dogmen: Sheriff Deegan is Lewis's father-in-law and hates Lewis for failing to save his daughter from drowning, striving to make Lewis miserable.
• In The Last of the Mohicans:
  • Chingachgook's son Uncas is killed in battle by Magua, making the father the titular "Last of the Mohicans."
  • In the original novel, Col. Munro outlives one of his daughters.
  • Magua lost his children a long time ago, fueling his hatred of the British.
• The Last Samurai: Moritsugu Katsumoto loses his son Nobutada when his loyalists led by Algren rescue him from Omura. Already mortally wounded, Nobutada goes down in a Last Stand to distract the soldiers pursuing them.
• In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Allan Quatermain has long since retired from adventuring and become reclusive and apathetic, out of guilt for having raised his son on his tales, only for their own adventure to end with Allan watching his son die in his arms.
• In The Legend of Tarzan, Chief M'Bonga wants to kill Tarzan because Tarzan killed his only son. That son, by the way, killed Tarzan's ape mother Kala. Towards the end of the film, though, M'Bonga reveals that his son didn't know Kala's connection to Tarzan: as far as he was concerned, she was just a Mangani for him to hunt and kill as a Rite of Passage. This makes Tarzan have a Heel Realization, and spare M'Bonga's life.
• The Leopard Man: Theresa is mauled to death by a leopard when her mother sends her to the store after dark.
• Liz in September: Eva lost her son Tommy while he was pretty young to cancer.
• The Lord of the Rings:
  • Théoden learns his only son has died while he had been brainwashed by his Evil Chancellor. He breaks down crying in front of his son's grave due to his grief. It's made all the sadder in that the line was something the actor had once been told by a mother who had lost her child.
    Théoden: No parent should have to bury their child.
  • Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, outlives his favorite son, Boromir. Despite bluntly telling his surviving son, Faramir, that he wishes Boromir should have lived instead of him, Denethor has a breakdown when Faramir is gravely wounded while leading an assault and attempts murder suicide by burning themselves together.
• Macbeth (2015): This adaptation of Macbeth opens with the funeral of Macbeth's young son.
• Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again: Donna died a year prior to the film, but her mother Ruby is still alive.
• The Man from Earth: Gruber turns out to be John's son from decades past and dies of a heart attack at the shock of it. It's implied that this has also happened before in John's past since his children don't share in this immortality. Why he keeps having children if he'll just abandon them to avoid being discovered and then outlive them is anyone's guess. It seems hugely traumatic on them all.
• In The Man in the Iron Mask, Athos outlives his son Raoul after King Louis orchestrates a Uriah Gambit, sending off Raoul to the front lines to kill him so Louis could claim Raoul's fiancée for himself.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • By the time of Guardians of the Galaxy, Drax has already lost his wife and daughter to Ronan the Accuser. Additionally, Peter Quill’s grandfather Jason outlived his daughter Meredith.
  • In Captain America: Civil War, it's revealed that Helmut Zemo's son was a casualty from the Battle of Sokovia. In the same film, Iron Man is confronted by a woman named Miriam Sharpe, whose son was also killed in Sokovia. Her speech to Tony motivates him to throw his support behind the Sokovia Accords.
  • Black Panther: It appears that Queen Ramonda loses her son T'Challa when he is seemingly killed in ritual combat. This turns out to not be the case, but she doesn't know it for several days. And then when Thanos wipes out half the universe at the end of Avengers: Infinity War, both of her children are among those disintegrated, though they're eventually brought back in Avengers: Endgame. Happens again in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Ramonda outlives T'Challa when he dies of a unknown illness.
  • Avengers: Endgame reveals that Clint Barton outlives his whole family (including his three children) during Thanos' culling of the universe's population, causing him to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against all criminals in the world.
  • The Teaser for Thor: Love and Thunder opens with Gorr craddling his dying daughter as she succumbed to starvation and thirst. In fact, his daughter's death caused his Start of Darkness as he gained possession of the Necrosword and vengefully tried to kill all the gods.
• Referenced in the mountaineering documentary Meru. Jimmy Chin's mother was afraid that he would die in a climbing accident, and after she died he felt able to take bigger risks.
• The Missing (2003):
  • One of the kidnapped young women, named Anne, brought along her infant child. This child dies about halfway through the film; a minute or so later, Anne gets her hands on a gun and shoots herself in the head.
  • Samuel's son (Maggie's brother) died at the age of six; he also had some children while Going Native with the Native Americans but none are living by the events of the film.
• Mother and Child has a particularly heartbreaking example - Karen has been trying to find her daughter Elizabeth, whom she had when she was 14 and had to give up for adoption. As it turns out, Elizabeth died while giving birth, and Karen only finds out about it a year after it happened.
• It's revealed in Murder on the Orient Express (2017) that a child's death is a major cause for the murder. Two-year-old Daisy Armstrong was kidnapped and murdered before the start of the plot, which would result in her mother dying due to a miscarriage with the unborn child and her father committing suicide out of grief afterwards. Ms. Hubbard aka Linda Arden effectively lost her granddaughter, daughter and son-in-law and is driven to kill the man who did this.
• Twice in None Shall Escape, a 1944 film about a trial against a Nazi officer following the end of the then-ongoing second world war which is told via flashbacks from the points of view of the witnesses at the trial.
  • Marja's daughter Janina is (apparently accidentally) shot at the "officers' club". Marja carries her lifeless body to the church for the funeral service,
  • Karl's son Willie is shot In the Back by his uncle Wilhelm for denouncing Nazism. Karl, having been in a concentration camp since before the war, is unaware of this when he testifies at Wilhelm's trial.
• Several adaptations of Oliver Twist make Mr. Brownlow into Oliver's maternal grandfather, rather than just a friend of his late father's as in the book. This means he outlives his daughter but is eventually reunited with her son.
• In Only Stwpd Cowz Txt N Drive, the Williams and O'Shea parents lose their respective daughters Emma and Jules in a car crash caused by texting and driving.
• In Ophelia, an adaptation of Hamlet, Queen Gertrude outlives her son Hamlet when he is killed by Laertes in their duel. Since Hamlet does not survive to take his revenge on Claudius, Gertrude kills Claudius herself before committing suicide.
• The titular creature in Orca: The Killer Whale witnesses his mate being accidentally killed by Nolan - and as she dies, the female orca miscarries their calf. Is it any wonder the orca is driven to kill humans in revenge?
• Hercules Hansen in Pacific Rim. After saving Chuck from Scissure's attack on Sydney as a young child, Herc later loses his 21-year-old son by Heroic Sacrifice and a nuclear explosion in order to close the Breach. At that point, the Kaiju have officially taken Herc's entire family from him and it's likely that he'll continue to Ghost-Drift with his dead son for an unknown length of time.
• Paris, je t'aime: The "Place des Victoires" segment has a woman (played by Juliette Binoche) grieving over her recently deceased young son, repeating his (apparent last) words that cowboys do still exist to herself in a very Madness Mantra kind of way. Her husband and daughter try to help her out of this, but she goes after hearing what seems to be her son's voice. There she's met by a magical cowboy (Willem Dafoe) and encounters the ghost of her son for one last reunion before accepting that she has to let him go, since her living loved ones need her.
• The Patriot (2000):
  • Benjamin's second son Thomas is shot by Colonel Tavington for trying to free his older brother Gabriel. Some time later, Tavington kills Gabriel as well and is also responsible for the death of Gabriel's wife. Benjamin avenges them all in the end.
  • Major Jean Villeneuve watched his wife and two daughters burn alive, after the British set fire to their ship. You can probably guess how he feels about the British.
  • John Billings shoots himself after finding the bodies of his wife and son, following a raid by Tavington's men.
• In Pinocchio (2022, Disney), Geppetto had a son who died as a boy, whose memory inspires him to carve Pinocchio.
• Pokémon Detective Pikachu: Tim’s grandmother outlives her daughter after she dies of an unknown disease. This leads to her raising Tim after he doesn’t move with his dad.
• The Purge: Anarchy:
  • Sergeant Leo Barnes' son was killed by a drunk driver, who was freed on a technicality. The whole reason why he joins the Purge in the first place is so he can murder him. However, when the time comes and he corners the man, he ultimately cannot bring himself to kill him.
  • Eva's friend Tanya is shot and killed by her sister in front of their parents.
• The Rage: Carrie 2: Barbara Lang outlives her daughter Rachel, who dies shortly after disowning her for being possessed.
  • Carrie (1976): Ralph White (Carrie's father) left Margaret for another woman. His marriage to Barbara implied that he outlived his daughter Carrie.
• The Reaping: Katherine was once a missionary who went on an expedition to Sudan, which was suffering from a drought. Some of the locals blamed her preaching for the lack of rain, and as a result, took Katherine’s husband and their daughter as sacrifices for their god, killing them both. The sacrifice of her family destroys Katherine’s faith, and by the time of the movie proper, she is a miracle-debunking Hollywood Atheist.
• Resurrection (1999): In the backstory, the main character lost his son in a traffic accident a year prior, and is still emotionally distant because of it.
• Revenge of the Sith: Padmé is outlived by her parents Ruwee and Jobal Naberrie. Their son-in-law Anakin is also led to believe that he outlived his and Padmé's unborn child, but years later, he learns that that is not the case.
• Road to Perdition: Michael Sullivan Sr. outlives his younger son Peter after he is murdered by Connor Rooney early in the film.
• According to the comic adaptation of RoboCop 3, the new CEO of OCP is, in fact, the father of Bob Morton, who was killed in RoboCop (1987).
• Run All Night:
  • Shawn Maguire and his wife outlive their son Danny when Jimmy shoots him before he can shoot Michael.
  • Shawn orders Andrew Price to kill Michael before killing Jimmy, wanting Jimmy to feel the pain that he feels now.
  • Jimmy's mother is in the hospital and is presumably still there when Jimmy is killed by Price.
• Averting this is the main plot of Saving Private Ryan, bringing home a family's last son after his three brothers have been killed in action.
• Scream:
  • In the first film:
    • The very first onscreen kill of the franchise is that of Casey Becker, who is brutally disemboweled and hanged on the tree in front of her house. Her body is found by her parents.
    • Tatum Riley is outlived by her mother. So are the killers, Billy Loomis and Stu Macher (we've seen the former's father earlier in the film, while his mother is the Big Bad of the next film. Meanwhile, Stu briefly laments his parents' response to his actions shortly before his death).
  • In Scream 2, after Randy is killed, it's mentioned that Dewey has to become the Bearer of Bad News to his mother.
  • In Scream 4, Olivia is killed in her home while her mother is out of town with her boyfriend.
• In Stargate, Col. Jack O'Neil's son (Tyler) was playing with his father's gun and accidentally shot himself. O'Neil has a breakdown and becomes suicidal. The Air Force then recruits him to lead the mission through the Stargate on the understanding that it might be a Suicide Mission.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan:
    • In the extended edition, Scotty mentions that his sister's youngest son Peter Preston is serving on the Enterprise. Peter is one of the casualties during Khan's first attack on the ship, with Scotty tearfully speaking of his courage under fire.
    • In the same movie, Spock is survived by his parents Sarek and Amanda, before coming Back from the Dead in the next movie.
  • Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: Kirk's son David is killed defending Saavik and Spock from Klingons. Kirk is shattered by his son's death and feels the loss keenly throughout the sequels. In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, his grief fuels a deep hatred for Klingons, which makes him unable to believe that the Klingon Chancellor really does want to make peace and is later used by The Mole to frame Kirk for the Chancellor's murder.
  • In Star Trek V: The Final Frontier: Sybok, the illegitimate son of Sarek, is survived by his father when the former sacrifices himself to save the Enterprise crew from a malevolent entity posing as God.
  • Star Trek: Generations: In an off-screen example, Picard's sister-in-law Marie has her husband and their son burn to death in a fire.
• Steel Magnolias:
  • Anelle's landlady Ruth Robeline had a son who was killed in Vietnam.
  • M'Lynn winds up losing her daughter Shelby near the end of the film due to complications of diabetes/kidney failure.
• In Stockholm East, Anders and Anna's daughter Tove gets hit by a car and dies.
• Susie Q: The titular character died in a car crash in 1955, leaving her parents behind.
• The Cycle of Revenge in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance claims the life of Park Dong-jin's daughter, who is rendered comatose after drowning and mentioned to have passed away in the epilogue.
• Threads: Mr. and Mrs. Kemp both survive the initial nuclear attack, but their youngest son, Michael, dies after the aviary that he is hiding in collapses on top of him, and it's also implied that their oldest son, Jimmy, is also killed. A girl who closely resembles their daughter, Allison, is briefly seen in a detention camp that has been improvised to contain looters, but her identity is never confirmed.
• Vamps: Goody outlived both her children. She seems pretty okay with it. Her son died at 63, which she happily notes was old for the time. She's even happier that her daughter died at 99, which was nearly unheard of. However, at the end when she's dying, she sees visions of her children, seeming pleased at the idea of reuniting with them after death.
• In Warcraft (2016), Lothar's son is killed by Blackhand in front of Lothar, causing him to become unstable and enraged.
• What Dreams May Come: Chris and Annie lose both of their children to a car accident. Annie blames herself, believing that if she'd been driving her maternal instincts would have kicked in to avoid the truck that hit the car. The grief drives her to a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide.
• Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory: The Death by Adaptation of Charlie's father means that this trope applies to Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine. This enhances the bond between Charlie and Grandpa Joe, as each fills the void left by Mr. Bucket's death for the other.
• X-Men: Apocalypse: Erik Lehnsherr outlives his daughter Nina, who didn't even get the chance to reach adolescence.
• Zombieland: It is revealed near the end that Tallahassee's son was killed by the zombies, fueling his desire to kill every single one.

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